Related papers: ShapeBots: Shape-changing Swarm Robots
The coordination of robot swarms - large decentralized teams of robots - generally relies on robust and efficient inter-robot communication. Maintaining communication between robots is particularly challenging in field deployments.…
In collective robotic systems, the automatic generation of controllers for complex tasks is still a challenging problem. Open-ended evolution of complex robot behaviors can be a possible solution whereby an intrinsic driver for pattern…
To achieve a smooth and safe guiding of a drone formation by a human operator, we propose a novel interaction strategy for a human-swarm communication which combines impedance control and vibrotactile feedback. The presented approach takes…
Swarm systems consist of large numbers of robots that collaborate autonomously. With an appropriate level of human control, swarm systems could be applied in a variety of contexts ranging from search-and-rescue situations to Cyber defence.…
Robotic swarms are decentralized multi-robot systems whose members use local information from proximal neighbors to execute simple reactive control laws that result in emergent collective behaviors. In contrast, members of a general…
In this paper, we propose a novel vision-based control algorithm for regulating the whole body shape of extensible multisection soft continuum manipulators. Contrary to existing vision-based control algorithms in the literature that…
Cooperative transport is a striking phenomenon where multiple agents join forces to transit a payload too heavy for the individual. While social animals such as ants are routinely observed to coordinate transport at scale, reproducing the…
Robot swarms often exhibit emergent behaviors that are fascinating to observe; however, it is often difficult to predict what swarm behaviors can emerge under a given set of agent capabilities. We seek to efficiently leverage human input to…
Continuum robots are typically slender and flexible with infinite freedoms in theory, which poses a challenge for their control and application. The shape sensing of continuum robots is vital to realise accuracy control. This letter…
Robots are widely deployed in space environments because of their versatility and robustness. However, adverse gravity conditions and challenging terrain geometry expose the limitations of traditional robot designs, which are often forced…
Moving a module in a modular robot is a very complex and error-prone process. Unlike in swarm, in the modular robots we are targeting, the moving module must keep the connection to, at least, one other module. In order to miniaturize each…
Acoustophoresis has enabled novel interaction capabilities, such as levitation, volumetric displays, mid-air haptic feedback, and directional sound generation, to open new forms of multimodal interactions. However, its traditional…
This chapter is about the fundamentals of fabrication, control, and human-robot interaction of a new type of collaborative robotic manipulators, called malleable robots, which are based on adjustable architectures of varying stiffness for…
Robot swarms offer inherent robustness and the capacity to execute complex, collaborative tasks surpassing the capabilities of single-agent systems. Co-designing these systems is critical, as marginal improvements in individual performance…
We present an approach to the distributed storage of data across a swarm of mobile robots that forms a shared global memory. We assume that external storage infrastructure is absent, and that each robot is capable of devoting a quota of…
Roborobo! is a multi-platform, highly portable, robot simulator for large-scale collective robotics experiments. Roborobo! is coded in C++, and follows the KISS guideline ("Keep it simple"). Therefore, its external dependency is solely…
Applications of large-scale mobile multi-robot systems can be beneficial over monolithic robots because of higher potential for robustness and scalability. Developing controllers for multi-robot systems is challenging because the multitude…
The morphology of a slender soft-robot can be modified by sensing its shape via sensors and exerting moments via actuators embedded along its body. The actuating moments required to morph these soft-robots to a desired shape are often…
Spherical robots typically require at least two actuators to achieve controlled 2D planar motion. Here we present Rollbot, the first spherical robot capable of controllably maneuvering on a 2D plane with a single actuator, challenging this…
Swarms are highly robust systems that offer unique benefits compared to their alternatives. In this work, we propose a bio-inspired and artificial potential field-driven robot swarm control method, where the swarm formation dynamics are…